I am concerned about food miles and carbon emissions. What about the impact of international transportation on the environment?
Traidcraft's aim is to fight poverty through trade. Transporting products from developing countries is therefore unavoidable but we transport goods by sea rather than air wherever possible and we offset our carbon emissions through payments to Climate Care. 98% of our imports came by sea in 2006-2007.
We also restrict our negative environmental impact by sourcing non-fair trade goods from within the UK and Europe. For example, we use European oats in our cereal bars rather than importing them from South Africa.
Traidcraft also encourages producer groups to seek local and regional markets as well as international ones. This is largely to increase their resilience and limit the risks to producers posed by international markets – but it also has good environmental benefits.
Within the UK, we continue to communicate a concern for positive environmental policies to the organisations with which we work, and this is one of the criteria that we apply in determining whom we will use as our suppliers of goods and services.
